


Free Falling

by StaxFluffington



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (Eventual) Romance, Adventure, F/M, Friendship, Marvel Cinematic Universe - Freeform, OC, Oc from our universe goes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Really really slow burn I mean, Slow Burn, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-10 23:04:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8943088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaxFluffington/pseuds/StaxFluffington
Summary: Pulled from her dimension, Dani finds herself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Her sole purpose is to preserve the timeline to save as many lives as possible. But as she grows closer to her new friends, will she be able to resist the temptation to alter events for their benefit?Updates Saturdays for the foreseeable future. Eventual Dani/Avenger (Sloooooow burn)*Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OC*





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 

Dani, like every other high school senior in her class at that moment, was panicking. She sat in her desk staring down at her final exam, horrified.

_I knew I should have studied!_ she violently chastised herself, grabbing fistfuls of her ratty, dirty-blonde hair and leaning her elbows on the desk. As with every other day of the week, she had dawdled until there was no time to fully do her hair or pick out a good outfit. That oversight was the last thing on her mind now, however.

Her teacher leered at her from the heavy wooden desk at the front of the room. There was a mutual feeling of enmity between teacher and student, and Dani had anticipated the end of her time in high school since it had begun. _I wish I could go back a few weeks now…_

Ignoring the looks the looks all the jocks, the popular kids, and her crush were shooting her way, she clasped her hands together dramatically and looked heavenward.

_Please, God, if you’re real, SAAVE MEE! I’ll do ANYTHING! I’ll even go to college! Just get me out of this class! Start a fire or something!_

As if on cue, a white light surrounded her, and she disappeared from the room in a flash.

XXX

Everything swirled purple, and gravity seemed to have decided to take a vacation for once. She was falling through nothing, feeling quite stationary in spite of the sensation. If Dani had been capable of thought at that moment, it would have consisted mostly of swear words. As it was, all she could do was thrash as she tumbled to heaven knows where.

XXX

After a few moments, reality returned. Painfully. An expletive escaped her mouth as gravity returned and she landed on her posterior. As everything came back in to focus, she realized she was in an unfamiliar alleyway. Reaching to her side in a panic, she breathed a sigh of relief as she found that her leather messenger bag still hung from her shoulders. That happy discovery was short lived, as it were, due to another shocking development which she quickly noticed.

“…What the HECK is that?” Dani asked herself. The “It” in question seemed to be a floating light source, the size and shape of a basketball, bobbing just a few feet away.

_“Good, time to get to work!”_ a cheerful voice erupted from nowhere and everywhere at once. Dani, startled, scooted backwards and looked around.

“Who’s there!?”

_“It’s me… come on, get up, you need to get started!”_ the voice returned, just as the floating orb swooped terrifyingly close to her face. Backing up further, Dani found her back to the wall. She made a strangled noise before she could collect her thoughts.

“… Are you… God…?” she tentatively inquired. The voice laughed. “Because… right before this happened, I prayed to get out of finals…” she weakly continued.

_“I wish. No. Allow me to explain.”_ The ball’s light pulsed at its momentary pause. _“You see, multiple dimensions exist in reality. I work for a company that is supposed to ‘fix’ a section of these dimensions. We have thousands of active field agents, and you, ma’am, have just been hired.”_ If it was possible for the thing to be smiling, Dani imagined that it would have as it perkily rattled off the spiel.

“What do you mean, field agent?” The girl almost sneered. Multiple universes didn’t exist…

_“I mean, my dear, that you will be spending a good deal of time fixing problems in the universe. We’ve already installed the foresight software, so if you are about to royally screw things up, you will be warned,”_ the orb trilled.

“What? I’m not GOING to fix ANYTHING, I have finals to do!... What do you mean, software?”

_“You asked to be let out of the finals. That was agreement enough. You have to see this through now,”_ it retorted, seeming a bit snippy. _“We’ve cut your hair so that you fit in, and clothes that are appropriate for the time period can be found in your satchel.”_ Dani’s hand went up to her hair at the statement. To her dismay, her awesome hair, her hair that she had grown out for veritable months, had been cut off. She snarled ferally at this discovery.

“You. Cut. My. Hair?” she quietly and venomously asked. Undaunted, the sphere continued to speak.

_“So, I need to get going, I have other field agents to monitor. You’ll do just fine. The bag has everything you need,”_ it finished. In a flash similar to the one that had swallowed Dani, the sphere disappeared.

“HEY! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!” Dani bellowed, finally getting to her feet. Ears flushed with anger, she released a guttural yell and kicked the wall. All she succeeded in doing was hurting her foot. She shook off the pain and started to walk towards the street at the end of the alleyway.

She looked up upon reaching her destination. Everything looked… wrong. The brick buildings, the street that didn’t look like any she had seen, the people walking…

The people were all dressed like something out of history. Dani laughed.

“This is all fake, isn’t it?” she asked no-one in particular. “I’m on camera, aren’t I,” she nodded, more of a statement than a question. She grabbed the lapel of a well-dressed man as he started to get in to an old-timey car. “Hey, buddy, enough is enough! What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Excuse me? Let go of my shirt, boy!” Dani didn’t comply with the demand.

“Listen, drop the act, alright? It’s not funny! _Tell me what’s going on!_ ” she hollered. His face wrinkled into genuine anger.

She didn’t have time to register that he wasn’t faking before his fist connected with her face. She crumpled to the ground as he stepped over her and into the car. After the man drove off, she sat up and rubbed her head.

“…I guess it’s all real then…”

XXX

She was in the thirties. It was hard to believe, but the newspapers left on park benches all agreed. Now, she stood in front of a shop window, having changed into the period-appropriate clothes found in her bag. The suspenders were kind of pushing her fashion limits, but she was beyond caring.

She genuinely looked like a boy, now. Her friends and sister always loved to tease her, saying that she had the “body of a nine-year-old boy,” and for once she wasn’t terribly upset about that. It would probably be easier for her to do things if people thought she was a guy. She wondered if women were even allowed to vote now… she never really payed attention in History class, which she was majorly regretting now.

She was distracted from her reflection by a shout from the alley to her right. Peeking around the corner, she saw a small boy getting whaled on by a much larger one. Neither could have been more than ten years old. Shocked, she ran into the alleyway.

“Hey! HEY!” the larger one turned around, a positively menacing look on his beefy face. The boy he was beating on stood up with his fists still clenched, looking a bit out of it, the blood smeared on his face highlighting the bright blue-green hue of his eyes.

“Wha’da’ya want, you twit?” the attacker thundered, voice rather deep for someone of his age.

“Look, just leave that guy alone, you’ve already beat him into a pulp, ok?” Indeed, the boy was weaving a bit as he stood, and his eyes were out of focus. Dani worried that he might have a concussion.

“Quit bumping your gums and leave, this isn’t none of your business!” the brute roared. Dani stepped back a moment, but looking again at the bloodied boy, she sighed and prepared to fight. Once she had thrown her bag off to the side, the attacker advanced, murder in his eyes.

Dani wasn’t sure what to do, so she just closed her eyes and swung as hard as she could when the kid was in range. Something inside of her changed when she did… a strange tingle ran down her arm and she felt a lot more force behind her punch than she should have been able to create. At the boy’s howl, she opened her eyes and saw him doubled over in pain and crying.

She wasn’t about to question how she did that. Retrieving her bag, she ran to the unsteady victim and started to steer him out of the alleyway. He couldn’t walk, so she wasted no time scooping him up and carrying him away. He tried to slur something through the blood pouring from his nose, but Dani shushed him between her involuntary grunts. They would figure things out once they were far away from that jerk.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

 

She found a nice, make-do park that was mostly fenced in on a street corner. It looked like a building had been there before, based on the patterns of the houses. The fences would provide good cover if the attacker recovered and ran past. On a somewhat rotted park bench Dani laid the bleeding kid. He looked familiar… very familiar.

She dug through her purse, knowing that she didn’t have anything useful that she could remember. Her hand touched something cold. _I KNOW I didn’t have anything cold in there this morning…_ She grabbed it and pulled out an ice pack. Sighing, she decided to add this to the ‘figure it out later’ list. She reached into the bag again, and realized that her clothes that she had changed out of were no longer within.

“What the actual heck?” She would have started freaking out if the boy hadn’t started making noises just then. Her hand connected with a wad of absorptive, band-aid-like cloth, and she handed that to him. “Hold this against your nose, buddy,” she commanded. Sitting up, the boy complied.

“Wadabben?”

“What?”

“Wad habbend?” The boy again asked, ability to speak obviously impaired.

“I beat that jerk off, dude. Why were you fighting him?” The boy cocked his head, confused.

“…I don’d remember…” he slurred, still not entirely coherent. Dani sighed. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, so she handed him the ice pack. “Og… dat feels bad…” he nasally complained as she moved his hand to press the cold bag against his sore nose.

“Leave it there, it will keep you from puffing up too much. I don’t think it’s broken,” she said, noting that it wasn’t crooked. “Alright, what’s your name, kid?” She asked, trying to distract him as he seemed to be starting to panic.

“Ub… I’m Sdeeb…” he informed her.

“Sdeeb?” He shook his head.

“ _Sdeeb,_ ” he stressed.

“…Steve?” she guessed. He nodded emphatically. “Ok, Steve, we’re gonna chill here until you feel OK and then I’m gonna take you home, we cool?” He looked confused at her slang, but nodded. “So, Steve…” She had a revelation at that moment. _Steve!?_ She knew where she had seen him before. “Chris Evans!?” no, he had to just look like the guy… he couldn’t possibly be the real Steve Rogers! Steve sighed.

“Doh,” he said, obviously meaning ‘no’. “I’m _SDEEB!_ ” he again stressed.

“Uh… what’s your last name?”

“Rogers.” Dani stood up. “Where are you going?” he asked groggily. She didn’t answer.

 _It can’t be the real Captain America… that’s just a bunch of movies!_ She began to pace. _None of this should be real…_ She grabbed her hair with her hands. _Horrible stuff happens! This guy is gonna get iced in like fifteen years…_

“Excuse me?” The voice pulled her out of her panic. She turned back to Steve, slowing her breathing. “Are you ok?” She pulled herself together.

“Yes. I’m… Danny, by the way,” she said, deciding to use the masculine version of her real name if she was going to pretend to be a boy. She had gone to the effort of tying a cloth around her chest when she had changed, so she really could pull it off. She took a moment to really look at the kid. His clothes were too small and he was painfully thin and bony. His breathing was a bit raspy too… “Steve, how much do you have to eat each day?” His expression turned to panic momentarily before he gained his composure.

“Enoub. Why, do you deed food?” he asked, obviously lying and trying to deflect. Dani, having watched all the marvel movies several times over, realized that this was just how Steve acted.

“Ok. I’m going to take you out to eat, alright?” She wasn’t going to let the kid starve, as he obviously was.

“I hab to get hobe for didder soon…” He was a terrible liar. Dani decided to call him out on it. “Doh, really!” he continued to obviously fib.

“You don’t have any dinner today, do you?” she gently pressed, taking a shot in the dark.

“I… I…”

“Just one time, ok?” After a little bit more prodding, Steve finally gave in.

XXX

Dani felt badly, watching him eat. While he tried to work through the large meal slowly, he was obviously starving to wolf it down. She had tried to tell him to just eat it how he wanted to, but he insisted that he wasn’t going to eat ‘rudely,’ in true Steve fashion. She gave up as he was obviously upset, just glad that he was eating.

Once she had shown a true interest in him, he became somewhat of an open book. Dani got the impression that he didn’t have anybody aside from Bucky to talk with, and since they were both boys, she doubted that there were a lot of heart-to-heart moments. So, she listened attentively to Steve’s account of his father dying in a drunken accident at his young age, of all the times he had been a target for bullying at school, and how he couldn’t see his mom most of the time because she always had to work to keep their apartment. Dani tried desperately to keep the pity she felt out of her voice and expressions, because she knew that Steve would clam up if she didn’t. He was too proud to fish for sympathy, he just needed to talk it out.

The waiter walked up to collect the bill, and Dani reached into her purse to pull out the thirty dollars she knew she had stuffed in there that morning. What she pulled out instead was the exact cost of the meal she had bought. Astounded, she laid the money in the outstretched hand and waited until the man left before rooting through her bag. No other money was to be found. She huffed in annoyance. This bag was really starting to get on her nerves.

Her attention was pulled back to Steve as he finished his meal. Dani had bought an extra dish for his mother after he balked, realizing that his mother would still have no dinner that night. He was currently loading the chicken, vegetables and baked potato into the thin brown paper bag the restaurant had provided. He looked up at her as he did so.

“I have to go to school tomorrow but I don’t have to do anything after. Where… where do you live?” he questioned, speaking normally now that the blood had cleared from his nose.. Dani replied without thinking things through.

“I’m homeless,” she nodded. Steve looked aghast.

“You have to come stay with us!” he pleaded, looking genuinely upset at this revelation. Dani mentally facepalmed.

“Uh… actually, I live in that… park that I brought you too… You can find me there,” she asserted, trying to avoid going home with this kid. She needed time to think, to process everything that had happened in the day. He finally nodded after staring at her determined expression for a few moments.

“Ok. I’ll bring my best friend with me, ok?” She agreed, and they both parted ways.

XXX

The end of the alleyways behind the buildings led right into the park. Dani found a nice looking wooden crate at the mouth of one of the alleys. It was obviously old, but sleeping inside would keep her off the ground and keep her dry if it rained. She knocked the rectangular thing over so the opening was on the side, laid down a blanket that had conveniently appeared in her bag onto the bottom, and crawled inside. She decided that she could analyze what had happened in the morning, because right now she was far to tired to deal with harsh realities.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

 

Sitting on the park bench, Dani considered her options. _I could stay with Steve, he’s probably involved with the ‘stuff’ that ball of light wanted me to fix… then again, why should I do that? Knowing me, I’ll mess everything up. And what right does it have to force me to do its dirty work, anyway!_

Scuffing her feet, she stood up and wandered around the area. The sun was still high in the sky, so she couldn’t count on Steve’s arrival for a while. She wondered what would happen if she just left before he came and kept walking far, far away from here. She liked that idea. Most likely she would have followed through with it had a certain small boy not walked in just then.

“Danny!” Steve panted, looking like he had run a long way. He seemed shocked to find her there. Dani noted that the bruises on his face all looked old and yellowed… that shouldn’t be right, he had just been beat up yesterday.

“Steve?”

“Danny, where were you?” The blond looked upset now. “Why weren’t you here last week? ”

“Last week?” she echoed, confused.

“You said you would be here the next day and you weren’t! I came every day after, too!” Dani’s confusion grew. The sphere had to have a hand in this somehow… She decided to come clean with Steve.

Just as she opened her mouth, a headache slammed her. Whiteness seemed to envelop her again, and images flashed around her at an alarming rate. Even more alarmingly, she understood them all. She saw the path of the future change, Steve never joining the army, never falling in the ice, how the future would suffer from that because he was the one who would essentially win the war…

The visions faded, and she noticed that Steve was looking at her in concern as she gripped her head.

“…Are you ok?” he asked timidly. _Ok, I can’t tell him the truth…_ _but…_

“I had to go to the doctors, I’ve been having bad headaches, but I’m back now,” she fibbed. “…Also, I should probably tell you that I travel out of the city unexpectedly sometimes,” she lamely added, covering for any future events where she skipped a chunk of time. _Smooth. Let’s hope he believes it…_

“Oh. Ok,” he said. A thought occurred to Dani.

“…Steve, why aren’t you in school right now?” The boy looked ashamed.

“See… if we get there late, the teachers won’t let us in the school… and my friend and I saw this group of guys from our school bothering a girl, so we told them to stop…” he stuttered, not making eye contact.

“And by the time you finished dealing with them, it was too late to get to school?” she finished. Steve nodded. “Where’s your friend, then?”

“He’s leading them away. They blamed us because they got locked out too… My friend can run faster, so he decided to lead them away from me. He’ll be here in a minute.” Right on cue, a boy that Dani could only assume was Bucky stumbled into the park, wheezing like he had run a marathon.

“I… *pant*… I lost them, I think…” he breathed. Looking up, he looked shocked that Dani was there. “Are you Danny?”

“Yep. You must be Bucky.” She smiled as warmly as she could.

“How do you know his name?” The question came from Steve. _Shoot._ He hadn’t mentioned Bucky’s name the other day…

“You told me his name, remember?” she calmly replied, hoping that he wouldn’t question further.

“Oh…” Steve seemed convinced, but for a few moments longer Bucky looked suspicious. Putting his doubts aside, he offered Dani his hand.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you for saving Steve the other day, he doesn’t always think before getting into fights.” Steve looked only slightly offended at that. Dani took the hand and shook it firmly.

“Pleasure to meet you too. Now-” her statement was cut off by approaching yelling. “…I don’t suppose those are the guys you ‘lost,’ are they?” Bucky looked like he was about to pee his pants.

“…Probably…” And sure enough, a group of about five boys, all as tall as Dani and muscular as well, barreled into view. She grabbed each of her new friends’ hands and pulled them towards the alleyway.

“FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESE, RUN, GUYS!” she yelled, and off they sped.

XXX

After an exciting day of alternately losing their pursuers and being found by them again, Dani finally hid the group in another restaurant and watched amusedly as the angry group stomped around the street. Bucky and Steve seemed less amused. Dani just ordered the group dinner.

She was starting to enjoy this, even if it was only her second day here. While running, they had a ton of fun joking and chatting, more than she had ever had with her crummy excuses for friends in the other dimension. Shortly the food arrived at their table, and as her two companions dug in, she fished her phone out of her pocket.

It had re-appeared earlier that day, but she hadn’t had time to look at it. Holding it below the table so the two couldn’t see, she discreetly entered the password.

All her apps were there, but another one had shown up. The icon looked like the floating orb she had encountered yesterday… or last week, really. Yesterday for her. She opened it.

There was only one thing on the display, a digital readout counting up by the second. It currently showed just under twenty-four hours. Dani realized with a start that this amount of time was almost exactly how long she had been in this dimension. Really, it probably _was_ the exact amount of time.

“Washu doimf?” Bucky asked through a full mouth of mashed potatoes, ever observant. Dani looked up.

“Just thinking,” she quickly replied. Perhaps a little too quickly. She began to shovel food in her mouth before he could ask her another question, earning her a disapproving look from Steve. Before long, the two boys were yakking it up with each other again, and she returned her attention to her device.

Opening her browser, she searched for a news site. To her slight dismay, the last date of the most current article was the exact day that she had left her dimension, just minutes before the light had taken her. A popular news site like this would update every few hours… After checking another news site, Dani quickly concluded that she had all of the internet available to her, but only up until the time of her dimensional jump.

Her frustrating discovery was quickly pushed aside as Bucky again took notice of her suspicious behavior. Slipping the phone into her bag, she directed her attention back at the two boys and tried to ignore the way this all very suddenly felt real.

XXX

Back in her crate at the park, she began to wonder exactly what she should do. With agonizing slowness, the night dragged on and the moon rose higher above. Dani finally concluded that it would be best to just go along with what the orb had wanted. If she finished what it wanted her to do, she would eventually be able to go home. Also, the two boys felt more like her friends after a few hours than anyone else ever had.

She pieced together that her purpose was probably to keep Steve from dying. The kid was practically asking to be pounded into a pulp daily… and she was quite certain that he would have died if she hadn’t stopped that brute the first day. She could play along. She would be Steve’s bodyguard every evening after school and enjoy every minute of it, and when she got home…

Home had finals.

Dani wasn’t in a hurry to get back to that.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

 

Time passed exceedingly fast for Dani. She didn’t see Steve every day. It seemed that she jumped around to whenever he would need help, either emotionally or against somebody with whom he’d picked a fight. Sometimes that would be in two consecutive days, and once the gap between was nearly a month. But the two grew closer with every event. Bucky’s suspicion lingered, of what, Dani didn’t know. But he seemed to trust he for the most part, regardless. The fact that she regularly beat up Steve’s assailants or helped him escape them made her wonderful in his eyes. He eventually opened up to her as Steve had.

His family was significantly richer than Steve’s, which bothered Bucky significantly. What really frustrated him was that the smaller blond wouldn’t take help unless he really needed it. Dani knew firsthand how that was. Every time she wanted to take them to go eat something, it was an ordeal to convince Steve. She had eventually told him that she was homeless by choice and that she had enough money to support herself, which made matters a bit easier. She didn’t want to live with anyone because she never knew when she would wake up and find she had missed days, and figured it would be easier to hide it if she just lived in the park in the crate.

Bucky’s other main trouble was that he couldn’t get a girl. Dani thought this was hilarious, given how he was in the first Captain America movie, but decided to help him out. She directed him to learn to dance, what to say to a girl and what not to say, and very quickly he had a new girl on his arm every other week. Dani wasn’t sure whether she thought that it was funny or not. She’d created a monster.

Four years had passed for the boys since she had met them, making them both fourteen. For her it had been four _months_. More often in recent weeks, she had started jumping through time during the day while she was awake. It felt exactly like it did the first time she had jumped, and it was terrifying, but she had about a one minute warning now before it happened. It was funny some of the time, trying to end a conversation with Steve so she could leave and time-jump where he couldn’t see. This was unsurprisingly stressful.

The constant state of alert made her lose weight, which helped to create the illusion of aging as it made her face more gaunt. She had pretended to be thirteen when she met them and pulled it off, which meant that she would be about seventeen now. She had to use makeup, found in her bag, to make it look like she had stubble. Lowering her voice proved to be a difficult but necessary and effective way of creating the impression that she was older. She only hoped that they wouldn’t think to question why she never grew vertically.

XXX

The years zipped by. Her time with them became more infrequent, going as long as six months once. Steve’s mom died. Steve got a job drawing on commission, which really didn’t pay well, but his physical health wouldn’t allow for a better job. Bucky lived off his parent’s money, going to college for a business degree. Both were just entering their early twenties. Dani, according to her app, had only been in this dimension for ten months, making her just over nineteen. The two believed her to be twenty-three, which was difficult to portray, given her physicality. Steve was only an inch shorter than her, and even he had broader shoulders than she did. Everywhere they went, Bucky was teased for hanging around two weaklings. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind. There was also the fact that Dani was pretty good at beating people up when it was really necessary.

She had discovered that whenever Steve’s life was in danger, that initial extra strength she had gotten while swinging the punch that first day returned. An increased level of agility accompanied that strength, making it ridiculously easy for her to take down Steve’s attackers. Unfortunately, Dani only got those boosts if Steve’s life actually was in danger. The remainder of the time, if she stepped in she was pounded into gravy alongside him. In spite of this, she seemed to have gotten along mostly unscathed until the present.

Life before her dimension-jump seemed ever increasingly like a distant bad dream. She missed her family, that much was true, but never had she felt this happy, wanted, included and independent, even if all her necessities _did_ come out of a temperamental and unreliable bag. She found herself wishing that she wouldn’t be done with her assignment in this dimension anytime soon.

XXX

This had to be the end.

Dani found Steve being whaled on in a very familiar alleyway. This should be right before he became Captain America, at the beginning of the first movie. She didn’t want this to end.

Sighing, she ran in and rammed her shoulder into the small of the attacker’s back. He was barely effected. Dani prepared to get her butt handed to her yet again as he turned around.

Steve whacked a garbage can lid on the back of the man’s head as the taller attacker hauled back a fist, undoubtedly preparing to smash her face in.

As he turned around to face Steve again, Dani kicked him between the legs in a moment of stupidity. The man froze, huffing out of his nose in pain. Then, slowly, he turned to face Dani.

Suddenly, she was being held off her feet by a strong hand at her throat. Her vision blurred as she pulled and beat at the unyielding arm and Steve panickily showered the man’s back with punches. A quick backhand knocked the tenacious blonde to the ground. _Bucky, where the hell are you!?_ Dani mentally screamed as she felt herself slipping unconscious. Right on cue, Bucky heroically stalked into the alley and pulled the brute off of her. As he ran the attacker off, Dani gasped for air and grabbed at her sore throat.

“You know, Danny, it’s hilarious how you can beat up guys four times your size one day and then get completely pounded the next,” Bucky chuckled. Dani couldn’t help a wheezy laugh at that comment. “Are you ok?” She hoarsely replied in the affirmative. The two hauled Steve to his feet.

Dani tuned out during the whole conversation. She already knew that Bucky was going to be deployed the next day and that they were going to the expo. _I’m not ready for this to end… I can’t even warn them about what’s gonna come._ She glanced guiltily at Bucky, knowing what his fate would be.

“Come on, Dan, you’re upset that I’m getting deployed too? I’m gonna save America!” Bucky joked, seeing her sad face and misinterpreting its cause. Dani pulled herself out of it and walked with them down the alley, wordless.

XXX

“You two are about to be the last eligible men in New York,” Bucky grinned at the two as they walked through the expo. “You know, there’s three and a half million women here.” Dani snorted.

“Hell, I’d settle for just one,” Steve retorted, only half joking.

“Good thing I took care of that,” Bucky casually commented as he waved a group of girls over.

There were THREE girls, not two like in the movie.

With dawning horror, Dani realized that one was for her. They didn’t know that she was a girl herself, as straight one at that… she leaned over to Bucky.

“…I have a girlfriend,” she whispered in wide-eyed panic, not knowing what else to say to get her out of this. Bucky jumped, clearly startled.

“And you never told me this?”

“I… uh…”

“Holy cow, Danny!” was all he could say. “…Just… hang out with her for tonight, ok?” he requested. “You don’t have to do anything with her, just be friendly.” Finally, Dani nodded. This was going to be a long night.

XXX

It was all over. Bucky had gone home to get some rest, Steve had gone off to try to enlist… she would cry if it wasn’t for Victoria.

Victoria was the girl Dani had been stuck with. She was the clingiest person Dani had ever known or could ever hope to know. She was currently hanging on to Dani’s hand with a death grip and talking her ear off. This wouldn’t do at all, Dani needed time to mourn the loss of her friends.

“Victoria.” The girl continued to chatter incessantly. “…Victoria.” She said, a little more forcefully. “Hey!” Finally, her tormenter stopped to breathe, and Dani cut in. “Look, you wanna go back to my place? It’s just a crate in an alley, but it’s really homey.” That did the trick. _I should have thought of that sooner,_ Dani thought as she watched Victoria sputter and then run off. Sighing, she reached into her bag to check the time with her phone. Her hand brushed against a bundle of papers that hadn’t been there earlier.

The light of the streetlamp revealed them to be… enlistment papers. _Approved_ enlistment papers, with her name on them. The division was the 107 th… That was Bucky’s division!

Her heart simultaneously soared and dropped as she realized that her time with her friends was not over… but she would have to go to war. Tomorrow, bright and early. _Hallelujah…_


	5. Chapter 5

**Ok, so here’s what’s up. Starting this Monday I have a couple of evening/nighttime classes, so I’m changing the update days to Saturday. That’s all. Proceed with your day.**

**-Stax**

 

Chapter 5

 

“What the hell!?”

Dani gulped at the yell.

“Why the heck are you changing your clothes out here!?” Bucky asked, shocked. “Nazis could be hiding out here, go back to the camp and change there!”

Dani was really having a hard time hiding her gender in the army camp. Bucky outranked her, and had made it his personal job to make sure she only used the bathroom or changed clothes where she would be more likely to be found out. She sighed and trudged back to their temporary base.

Bucky had been acting strangely ever since she had shown up that morning after the expo. He seemed to think she was always hiding something from him now.

“First you tell me you’ve had a girlfriend all along, then you just reveal that you’ve not only enlisted without telling me, but have been _excepted!?_ ” was his initial reaction. Then, disbelief that somebody as small as she could be accepted. Then he just distanced himself.

Dani felt the sting of the distance. While both Steve and Bucky tended to be fairly reserved emotionally with each other, only opening up and baring their souls when the going got tough, they had both opened up to Dani almost completely. She was their confidant. The things that they couldn’t discuss with the other, they could discuss with her. Dani knew that Bucky felt betrayed by the “secrets” she had kept from him, and wished she could do something to change it. At least he was still civil about it.

She quickly re-bound her chest and finished dressing. She was supposed to be a twenty-eight-year-old man now, she couldn’t afford any discrepancies in her appearance. In reality she was just twenty and a half, if she went by the clock on her phone. In the months since she had been enlisted and deployed, she had not time-jumped once, a fact she was very happy about. There was a head count every day and night that would be difficult to get around, not to mention Bucky suspiciously stalking her whenever he wasn’t busy.

She didn’t have time to worry about projecting her image, however, because tomorrow an attack was planned against Rosiano. In the movie this was when Bucky and the 107th got captured. So Dani knew that it would fail, and she knew that she was probably going to die or be captured. Tomorrow at this time, she would be dead or on her way to seeing Steve again.

XXX

On the way to seeing Steve it was.

The person in charge of processing prisoners figured out pretty quickly during the non-consensual strip search that she was a female. They didn’t tell the rest of the men, thank God, but they DID separate her. That could be a good or a bad thing.

They wanted to know why a woman would join the army. She rubbed her cropped, dirty-blonde hair and spouted some crud about how she wanted to protect the country and do her part, parroting phrases Steve had said time and time again.

They quickly decided to give her to Arnim Zola for his experiments. He, in turn, quickly found out that something was off with her. Strapped down to a table and drugged within an inch of her life because she wouldn’t stop fighting, the only bit of their science-talk that she caught was “Radiating an unknown energy”. In the groggy back of her mind, she remembered that on the TV show ‘Doctor Who,’ anybody who jumped through dimensions got energy on them from the void in between dimensions. If the Avenger’s universe was real, perhaps the Doctor Who universe was too…

Things were blissfully dark for a long time. When she came to her senses,  she was still stretched out on her back in the same uncomfortable position, arms strapped above and feet strapped below.

It was unusually chilly, though.

She looked down at herself and gasped. They had stripped her down to her underwear and put a bra on her that she didn’t recognize. Sensors were taped to almost half of her bare legs, stomach, clavicle, and neck. Every spot without sensors had goosebumps. It was way too cold for this…

Sluggishly, she took in everything else. Nobody was in the room. Alarms were going off in the distance, which she hadn’t noticed at first. A surge of panic made her thrash against her bonds. _Alarms mean that this factory is going to blow up in a few minutes!_ Quickly realizing that her struggles were pointless, she laid back and cried a little bit.

Past the door Steve suddenly rushed with Bucky. He stopped and lead his staggering friend into the room, noticing her on the table. Dani tried to say his name, but with the residual drugs still in her system she could only make a pained moan. She quickly realized that she actually WAS in pain. No time to worry about that now.

“Oh my- _they made you into a woman!”_ Had Dani been fully in control of her body, she would have laughed at his assumption. “Danny! Oh no! here…” he began to remove her straps and peel the sensors and needles off of her. Bucky too looked shocked, but also very distant as if he wasn’t all there either. Dani gurgled out an involuntary chuckle at the situation. Everything was so blurry…

She found herself wrapped in a blanket and being carried quickly.

“…Feeve…” she slurred, trying to say Steve’s name to get his attention. He ignored her. _Okay, I know when I’m not needed, I’ll just go to sleep then…_

XXX

Waking up was like wading through a vat of maple syrup, Dani decided.

She concluded that she should keep her eyes closed until her body started being a bit more responsive.

People were arguing. She tried to listen through her mental fog.

“You can’t just change a man into a woman! She had to be a woman all along! Come on, Steve! I figured it out months ago!” _That’s Bucky,_ she thought.

“She wouldn’t lie to us about something like that, Buck!” _That one is Steve._

“It doesn’t matter, gentlemen. What matters is that she is a woman _right now_.” That was the Colonel.

They continued to bicker. Dani got the impression that she wouldn’t be kicked out even if they found that she had been a woman all along. They were talking about what she had done in the past. She had often recommended a plan of attack for battles that wound up saving the lives of the 107th, earning her a promotion to ‘Corporal’ and getting her a good reputation in camp. They seemed to think that her usefulness merited letting her stay. She breathed an involuntary sigh of relief that she wouldn’t be court martialed, inadvertently alerting them that she was now conscious.

“She’s awake,” Bucky concluded. Dani slowly sat up, resulting in horrible pain and vertigo. The three crowded around her, pulling up chairs.

“Tell us everything,” Bucky sternly commanded. Dani sighed. Her visions didn’t start flashing to stop her… so she decided that she was going to reveal everything that she could.

XXX

“So basically, if I tell you what’s going to happen or how to fix it, most of the time it will result in us losing the war and a lot more men,” Dani concluded. No vision had stopped her, for whatever reason it was fine to reveal her reasons for being there now. She had told them everything except for upcoming events.

All three men sighed. She had used her phone as proof in the middle of her explanation, and none seemed to doubt the truth of her statement. Nobody looked particularly happy that they believed it was true, however.

“Look, like I said, if there is anything that I can fix, I will fix it. The visions I mentioned will let me know if there is,” she commented somewhat sadly. Neither of her friends would trust her ever again.

Bucky and Steve looked at each other and then back at the Colonel.

“Go on, gentlemen, I’ll deal with things from here,” he ordered. They left, and Dani could hear them arguing outside as they walked away from the tent. “You will be allowed to stay. You will be allowed to fight. You will be given gear that is more appropriate for you,” the Colonel started, “But if you pull anything, put anyone in danger or fail to fix something that you easily could, I will court martial your ass so fast you’ll wish you didn’t have one.”

Dani just nodded. It was a start.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6  
  
Time was running out.  
Dani slid down the zip line to the train, mentally panicking. Bucky was going to fall into the canyon below in just a few short minutes. She couldn’t let that happen.  
Conversely, she couldn’t let that NOT happen. Every time she thought of saving him, she got visions saying that that was a terrible idea and showing her all the people who would die as a result.  
The events leading up to his fall whipped by. She fought the Hydra agents, not really mentally present. There was no way she could just let this happen…  
And then, it was time. It was only a matter of seconds now… and Dani got an idea.  
She could take his place!  
She let slip a guffaw at that. It was so obvious! She wasted no time in switching the standing positions with Bucky. Time slowed to a crawl.  
As much as it hurt to bang against the ragged flap of metal as the blast of energy blew her out of the train, it hurt worse to see the fear in Steve and Bucky’s eyes. The past months had been rough, and they hadn’t really talked to her. Steve, bless him, had been so awkward around her. She knew it wasn’t because she was a girl, because he never acted THIS awkward around girls. It was because he had opened his soul to someone and that someone had basically lied to him for the duration of their friendship. They understood why she had pretended to be a guy, they just didn’t like it. It was only recently that they started becoming close with her again, and Steve had even started confiding in her once more. And now she was throwing that friendship away and saving it at the same time, because she knew that Steve would never forgive her if she let Bucky fall to his apparent death. It broke her heart to see the fear in their faces, in spite of her resolution.   
They reached out to her and yelled to her to hold on. She knew she had to let go soon, but she wanted to say goodbye at least.   
“I have to do this, please back up!” she yelled. The shock was apparent on their faces. “I have to fall to protect the timeline, I’m sorr-”  
Her apology was cut off as Bucky leaned forward to grab her wrist. The train bumped a bit and he lost his balance.  
Before her horrified eyes, he fell as Steve tried to grab for him. Both of the remaining friends looked down in complete and total shock as Bucky tumbled downward, screaming. Dani felt a hand wrap around her wrist, and then found herself in the train with an almost violent jerk. Steve had pulled her in. Both of their eyes were filled with tears.  
“I… I was supposed to fall instead of him! I was going to replace him! I…” Her frenzied, horrified rant was cut off as Steve pulled her into a hug. Sobbing heart-wrenchingly onto each other’s shoulders, they waited for the train to reach its destination.  
XXX  
Finally, Dani got to meet Peggy Carter. She just wished it had been under better circumstances.   
She was one of Dani’s personal heroes. It was to her that Dani now looked for strength. If Peggy dealt with all of life’s problems without more than a few tears, so would Dani.  
Steve, in his typical manner, decided that a direct attack against Hydra’s much more powerful force was the way to go. Had she not known that it would work, Dani would have vetoed it as a crazy suicide mission.  
They were breaking into the facility now. Everything was going exactly as the movie had. One by one the enemy agents fell as the infiltrating soldiers pushed towards the hangar.   
Steve had forgiven Dani for Bucky’s death. She had explained that someone needed to ‘die,’ without telling him what their poor friend would be going through right about now. He saw that she had tried to take his place. He was upset but not at her. Dani couldn’t forgive herself, though. Her one shot at redemption now, in her opinion, was to keep Steve from crashing the plane into the ice. Once again, the visions tried to dissuade her, but she wasn’t about to let something traumatic happen to her only other friend.   
The group quickly found themselves at the hanger. Dani felt numb as they chased the escaping plane, got a ride from Peggy and the Colonel, and just barely made it inside. She almost was injured from not paying attention in the ensuing fight with the henchmen. And as Dani and her best friend battled Schmidt one last time, she felt the tears roll down her face as she realized that there really wasn’t anything she could do without killing millions.   
A vision hit her like a brick wall. Steve wouldn’t crash the plane while she was still in it! That stupid idiot… He would try to land the plane someplace else, succeed, and never get iced.   
She sighed, knowing what she had to do.  
A trap door was conveniently near to her. As Schmidt was sucked into the portal, she opened it. Steve noticed her.  
“Dani! What are you doing!?” He started to walk over to her.  
“Stay back, Steve!” she hollered over the engine, sitting and putting her feet into the hole. He stopped and held his hands up non-threateningly.   
“What are you doing!?” he yelled again, the wind nearly drowning out his voice. Dani couldn’t meet his eyes.  
“I have to do this to save a bunch of lives. I’m sorry…” she slipped the rest of the way through the hatch. Steve, with a strangled cry, dashed forward to try to grab her. His fingertips lightly brushed her arm, and then she was out. His worried face at the hole was only visible momentarily before the plane carried him out of view.   
She was free falling. It felt… just like it did when she time-jumped. Her breath caught in her throat with every heave of her chest from how strange it felt. She was always falling. Falling when she was time-jumping, falling now, falling… except when she could have saved Bucky.  
And with that thought, she crashed into the icy water below and lost consciousness.   
XXX  
She was still falling. Purple swirled everywhere… she guessed that she had jumped just before she had drowned. Funny, because she wasn’t wet.   
The sensation seemed to last much longer than it usually did, which was mildly frustrating. Thinking was very difficult in this in-between place. It was like the swirling, deep violet stuff that completely surrounded her was seeping into her brain and fogging over everything.   
After what felt like years, Dani landed hard on her bottom. The fog cleared to reveal a crying child. His tousled brown hair flopped uselessly over his eyes, preventing him from seeing her. Further inspection of the area showed that this was his bedroom… Crap. She couldn’t be found in some random kid’s bedroom.  
The door banged open just then, and a short, angry looking man glowered down at the boy. Dani stood up.  
“I’m sorry, I don’t know how I got here, I’ll just be going…” To her surprise, the man didn’t look at her when she said that, but the boy did, momentarily, before returning his horrified gaze to the man. “Uh… sir…?” He still didn’t respond.  
She was about to sneak around him and take the chance to get away when he spoke. Not to her, however, but to the cowering heap on the floor that seemed to be his son.  
“Why isn’t this room clean!?” he thundered. He sounded incredibly drunk. Glancing around the room, Dani noted that it was actually meticulously clean. What was this guy’s problem? He roared down at the silent child. “I asked you a question, you little shit!” The kid gulped.  
“I…I did clean…” He obviously had cleaned. The father plainly didn’t like this answer, though.  
“Don’t talk back to me! DON’T YOU DARE TALK BACK TO ME!” the plainly inebriated man demanded at the top of his lungs. To Dani’s horror, he grabbed the kid by the shirt and lifted him off the ground.  
“HEY!” she yelled, not about to let this slide. She hauled back and punched the man squarely in the back of the head.  
Her hand went clean through.  
Eyes wide, all she could do was sit and watch as the man beat the kid practically senseless.   
When the man got tired, he left his son crying on the floor, somewhat bloodied. She crouched next to him and put a hand on his back. It didn’t ghost through like it had with the father. The boy nervously looked up.  
“Wh-wh-who are y-you?” he stuttered through his hiccupping sobs. Dani sighed.  
“I’m… your imaginary friend.” And she knew with certainty that, even if the orb came and offered to let her go home, she would turn it down. This kid needed her. “What’s your name, dude?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light to hide her horror at the situation.  
“I-I’m Bruce B-Banner.”


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

 

Dani held Bruce’s hand as his father beat him yet again. Her blood boiled violently as she was forced to watch helplessly. _Why would the sphere put me here without letting me actually DO something?_ she fussed, trying to comfort the terrified boy as best she could.

This was a regular occurrence, as Dani had learned over the past two weeks that she had been with Bruce. The poor kid was only about seven years old and had already lost his mother. His abusive father was literally the only family he had. Unfortunately, his father only let him go to school when he wasn’t bruised up, which wasn’t often, so the boy was stuck at home most of the time. His face was painfully thin from the stress.

And all Dani could do was hold his hand and try to comfort and play with him when he wasn’t being abused. She was even more helpless to protect him than he was to protect himself.

_That’s it!_

She would direct him to go get help! He could run to a pay phone and call child protective services, and then he would be out of this environment! She continued to hold his hand until his dad was through. Then, she hugged the crying boy.

“Bruce,” she started. He hiccupped a questioning- sounding grunt. “We are gonna get you out of here, ok? Next time you go to school, we’re gonna call somebody who will take you to a new family. Your dad won’t be able to find you, ok?” she said softly. He hesitantly nodded. “You have quarters?” he shook his head. Dani sighed. “We need to get some from your dad’s wallet then.” It took some convincing, but finally Bruce agreed.

XXX

They waited for his dad to pass out drunk on the couch before making their move. Dani scoped the place out first by phazing through the walls, which she had found she could do now. Bruce thought was the coolest thing ever.

“All clear…” she signaled him. They snuck up to the snoring mass, and Bruce looked at her expectantly.

“What now?” he whispered.

“His wallet is right there,” Dani pointed. The man was lying on his stomach, wallet half hanging out of his back pocket. Bruce shuddered.

“Can’t you get it, Dani?” he pleaded in a quiet squeak. She sighed.

“If I could do that, I wouldn’t have brought you out here… You don’t have to try if you’re scared,” she concluded, noticing that the boy was beginning to shake. He shook his head.

“I can be brave.” With that, he tentatively tugged the wallet out of its place. Dani had him grab four quarters, just in case the call ran long. Bruce started to shove the wallet slowly back into the pocket. A waking grunt sounded from deep in the man’s chest. Bruce froze in a panic, and Dani instinctually stepped in front of him. The two waited in horror.

Bruce’s dad rubbed his nose without waking and seemed to return to his deeper sleep. Identical sighs of relief escaped the pair, and Bruce gently maneuvered the wallet the rest of the way in.

XXX

“Dani, I can’t wait until Monday!” Bruce cried as quietly as he could.

Today was a Thursday. His dad had beaten him today, meaning he couldn’t go to school Friday. Bruce’s house and the school he attended were all in a crappy city, and nobody there particularly cared if a little boy was abused or if he didn’t show to school half the time. Meaning, the kid would be stuck in the house for three days until Monday. They needed to be out of the house to call child protective services, and heaven knows what damage his dad could do before then.

“You gotta crawl out the window,” Dani directed.

“What!?”

“Your dad usually stays passed out for five or six hours after he drinks like this, right?” she asked. He nodded, seeing where she was going. “Well, we can walk down to some gas station and back before he realizes you’re gone. You couldn’t go through the door, that squeaks. You game?”

“…ok. Let’s hurry though!” he agreed and promptly scrambled out the window. Dani just walked through the wall, earning a smile from the battered child.

The nearest gas station was a mile down the road, so off they ran. Bruce grew tired quickly, so they took longer to reach their destination than she would have liked, but they made it unscathed. Dani directed him to look through the mildewed phonebook provided, and they quickly found the appropriate number. Dani walked him through the conversation, and somebody agreed to come and pick him up. They breathed a sigh of relief.

 “Ok, we have to wait at your house for a few hours probably, they might get there before your dad wakes up.” Dani grabbed his hand and they headed back the way they came.

XXX

His dad had woken up while they were gone, and he was mad.

They crouched under the window and listened to the enraged man curse, calling for his unfortunate son.

“We need to go hide a few blocks away, dude, this isn’t going to end well,” she whispered. _Why the hell am I whispering, his butthole of a dad can’t hear me…_

Suddenly, she was hit with a vision. His dad was coming outside in seconds! Bruce…

She panicked. Bruce’s dad would kill him in a drunken rage! She heard the front door slam.

“Run around the back!” she urgently hissed. They did, running through the yard to the house behind them. A roar from where they had just come told them that his dad spotted them. Cutting through to the next street over, they ran like their lives depended on it. At least one of their lives did, at least.

“I’m… getting…tired…” Bruce panted. Dani looked around.

“Crawl under those bushes!” she hollered. The large, overgrown shrubs made the perfect hiding place. Bruce’s dad thundered by, screaming his name in a terrifyingly drunken pitch. The two sat, waiting for the kid to catch his breath. For now, they were safe.

XXX  
After his dad went back inside, Bruce and Dani hid in a tree in the house next-door. They climbed down when a car far too expensive for this neighborhood pulled into the driveway. Two well-dressed women stepped out and stepped up to the dilapidated door. Bruce tugged on one of their skirts.

“Uh… I was the one who called you…” he mumbled. The woman gasped, seeing the horrible bruising on his face and arms. His dad answered the door.

Yelling an expletive, the dad tried to grab for his son. Both women pulled the poor boy out of the way and stepped in between.

“You really did beat him then?” the other woman asked, plainly furious.

Dani and Bruce grinned at each other as the women had a yelling match with the horrible man. When they tried to bring Bruce to their car, his dad made one last grab for him, earning him a spray of mace in his eyes by the first woman.

The two friends slid into the back of the luxurious car together. Bruce was safe.

XXX

Free from the terror of his past life, Bruce excelled in everything. He was at the top of his new class. His new family, while they didn’t seem terribly emotionally connected to him, were at least decent and tended to his needs. At a suggestion from Dani, Bruce started focusing his newfound brilliance on the study of science, which he found he enjoyed even at his young age.

Bruce had even made a friend in school named Betty. He had emotional support other than Dani’s now. Her job was done.

She was still upset when she felt herself start to time shift. She told Bruce that she had to leave, which he didn’t deal with very well. They hadn’t even known each other for an entire month, and it still broke Dani’s heart to part this way.

She still had no say in the matter. Quickly, she was free falling yet again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have time for life even. Sorry for the week delay, but here it is. Pls enjoy.

Chapter 8

 

Ending the time jump by landing on her bum was something Dani wished wasn’t a reoccurrence. She winced and pulled herself to her feet, surveying the settings. This place looked… very unpromising. Everything was drab and plain, even painfully so. She shuddered. Creepiness seemed to emanate off of the walls. The only sound seemed to be the soft shuffling of feet in the distance. Hesitating, Dani stepped out of the small sitting room into the equally drab hallway.

A line of girls walked past, feet shuffling in synch, gazes focused ahead and spines perfectly straight. Dani subconsciously straightened at the sight of their perfect posture. The strange sight brought to mind a scene she had watched in Avengers: Age of Ultron. _I bet I’m here for the Black Widow now… this is probably where she grew up._ Dani shuddered. That poor girl…

She stepped quietly down the stairs. They couldn’t hear or see her, she knew, but the deafening silence seemed to challenge her to break it. She wasn’t that brave, not even after the horrors of war. This was far more sinister than anything she had experienced.

A lone voice rang in the distance. Dani quickly traced it to the source.

Another familiar sight greeted her. Girls were soundlessly going through a series of complex looking ballet moves, just as in synch as the hallway girls had been. A harsh voice was repeating a command over and over, every few seconds. Dani knew she was commanding ‘again,’ as every time it was uttered the girls would start at the beginning again. Their movements seemed flawless, but apparently not so to the horrible woman ordering them to start over so many times.   
  
A flash of red from the center of the group caught Dani’s eyes. _That must be her…_

A girl on the edge tripped up. Fearfully she looked up to the woman in charge, who flicked her wrist. Some men that Dani hadn’t noticed before walked over and rolled out two tarps. One was hung from hooks in the wall and the other was laid out on the floor below. Together they made a ‘photoshoot’ sort of area against the wall and floor. The girl who tripped went to stand on the tarp, face as white as a sheet. She stood rigidly in place.

Some younger girls were sitting and watching from the wall. They all looked horrified, as did most of the girls who had been dancing. The younger version of the Black Widow, however, seemed completely emotionless and unfazed. The horrible woman started to speak.

Dani didn’t understand her words, but she could piece together the meaning. With three fingers held up, the woman pointed to the first and asked a question. All the girls in the room replied in voices plainly trying to be flat and emotionless but failing. The same thing happened when the woman pointed to the second upheld finger. When she pointed to the third and asked her question, some of the girls in the back started crying. They were silenced with an angrily barked command.

Dani deduced, from this display, that it meant that this place had a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. But what-

A bang sounded from behind her. A gunshot. Dani had been in enough battles to recognize that sound, that horrible sound that haunted her nightmares every moment she dreamed. The youngest girls who were watching began to sob, barely settling down when they were yelled at. Only the Black Widow still stood emotionless, even as the dancers around her mirrored the horror of the younger girls in their eyes.

Dani slowly turned around.

Slumped dramatically on the floor with a gory hole through her head was the poor girl. Dani dry heaved and ran out of the room.

War hadn’t prepared her for this.

All she could think of was the lack of humanity in the Black Widows eyes. She knew, without any tinge of uncertainty, was that her next task would be to preserve the girl’s humanity. Dani got the sinking feeling that it was a lost cause.

XXX

Dani followed the girls back to their bedrooms. The Black Widow was alone in hers, for the moment, so Dani approached the redhead. She had looked right through her in the room, maybe she could see her now that they were alone. Sure enough, the younger girl looked up in shock at the motion and stood suddenly.

She asked something in Russian, standing at attention. _She must think I’m one of the people running this hell hole…_

“Um… hey, Natalia, listen, I’m not one of those people, I’m… uh…” she quickly said, not wanting the future Avenger to act so formally around her. The Black Widow just wrinkled her forehead slightly in confusion, still standing at attention. She must not understand English. Dani stepped forward and tried again. “Look, I’m not one of those jerks, I’m Dani and I’m here to help you with… stuff…” she trailed off, getting slightly worried as the Black Widow’s body language changed.

The redhead stiffened further, if possible, and crouched ever-so-slightly. Dani could see that she was ready to pounce into action and kick her ass. She prayed silently that she was still intangible.

“Natalia, it’s okay, I’m DANI,” she relayed, dramatically pointing at herself as she emphasized her name. “Friend. You and me. Really.”

This didn’t do much to calm the assassin in the making. Without any warning, she jumped into Dani in a slightly more sophisticated version of a football tackle… and passed right through the dimensional traveler. Dani’s sigh of relief was covered by the other girl’s shriek of shock or terror… whichever it was.

“Ok, let’s try that again,” Dani nodded, ignoring the horrified look she received. “I’m Dani and I’m your new chum, got it?” At that, the Black Widow backed up and looked around. _She probably thinks that I’m a ghost or something…_

That thought stopped Dani’s attempts at communications abruptly. _Damn… maybe I AM a ghost! How the heck do I KNOW if I survived the fall from the plane, really? Maybe I died…_

Her thought process was interrupted as the other girl dashed out of the room. Dani decided to deal with the possibility that she was dead some other time. Running after her, she whipped out her phone. Conveniently, she had a translation app on her phone from one day when she was bored. Nothing productive had come from fiddling with it, but familiarity allowed her to find the “English to Russian” setting while running.

She found her new acquaintance huddled in a closet, sweating bullets. Dani shook her head frustratedly. It would do no good in the long run to scare her. Panting, she typed her message into her phone and hit play. The mechanical voice echoed in a tinny tone down the halls.

< _Hello, my name is Dani. Please don’t be scared, I’m a ghost but I’m here to help you. >_

Standing up violently, the Black Widow widened her eyes and let loose a string of high-pitched Russian chatter. Dani sighed and typed into the phone again.

_< I’m sorry, I can’t understand you. This is my ghost translator, but it only works from me to you… I’m American, so unless you happen to speak English, I’m not exactly sure how we can communicate.>_

The redhead narrowed her eyes. She hissed a word that sounded strikingly like ‘American’, distain dripping off of her. Dani stifled yet another sigh- with the frequency she had been doing that, she was sure that the girl would think she had breathing problems.

_< Look, I just want to help you. This is a bad place, they’re messing you up. Do you even have any friends here?>_

Without even attempting to answer, the Black Widow walked through Dani and calmly stalked back to her room. Running after her, Dani tried to grab her attention to no avail. She waved her hand in front of the unresponsive girl’s eyes, eliciting an involuntary eye twitch, which meant she could still see Dani.

 _This little shit is ignoring me…!_ A door was slammed in her face, which she walked through.

“HEY!” she yelled, getting no reaction. The Widow was just going about her business, completely ignoring every attempt by Dani.

Things were off to a great start.


End file.
